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Comment by oetnxkdrlgcexu | Hacker News Reader

This problem has its roots in deinstitutionalization. Many centuries were spent building a social system of asylums to house people incapable of participating in society for one reason or another.

However, the absolute power of the asylum operators over their charges inevitably lead to gross abuses which caused the entire centuries-old system to be abolished and replaced with nothing.

I have no idea what could possibly be a solution here. There will probably always be some number of people incapable of reasonable self care. There is also no system honest enough to be trusted to have absolute power over the lives of dependent others. This problem seems intractable.

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The Nordic countries also deinstitutionalized but they are light-years ahead of most other countries in tackling this problem (though still far off the goal). The biggest problem is that you simply cannot get something like it through the political system in the US: Humane prisons that are there to rehabilitate instead of parking or punishment, actual free healthcare all the way through the system, state-run centers that provide shelter, food, social helpers, etc. (that isn't just parking people with a roof over their head to hide the problem). I don't believe for a second any of this would have the interest of (enough) voters or a snowballs chance in hell of passing politicians as long as An Eye For An Eye and The American Dream are still there. They are IMO incompatible with such a humane system.

There was this bbc show were they host was trying to find the most humane method of capital punishment. He found a few that would be acceptable.

He tried to introduce them in Texas, they were like the whole point is that they suffer.

Edit: I think it was this one: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband...

It wasn't replaced with "nothing" because the problem is still there and needed to be handled. Since no better solution was given it was defaulted to the police. But the police are trained to handle criminals, so they end up treating homelessness like a crime.

This is what people talk about when they say defund the police. They want to downsize police to the point where they only deal with crime and use the freed up funds to run mental health centers, halfway houses, drug treatment centers, etc...

The police are "nothing" - they are the default handlers of antisocial behavior, but in no way are they mental heath specialists.

wrt mental health centers: what happens when people don't want to go to those places? Either they'll be in exactly the same position of being handled by the police, or the police will be too busy in which case the public will suffer (which usually changes the electorate opinion on matters).

Or, and this is a controversial view, maybe some homeless people could be helped through cheaper access to cars. As part of my job I have recently sat through many days of cases at a local courthouse. In our rural area, judges are loathed to revoke a driver's license because they know that doing so renders a person effectively unemployable locally. If someone doesn't have access to a car, and therefore cannot find work, perhaps there is a place for giving them better access to a car.

(Anyone saying that the answer is better public transport, that isn't an option here. Rural area. Most work is in farms/oil fields/military. 24/7 bus service over thousands of square miles just isn't ever going to happen. No car or no cellphone = No work.)

Depends on what you mean by "access" to cars. Simply giving away free cars won't work because they are expensive to operate and maintain.

I once lived in a city (Part of Vancouver) where the local health authority paid for cabs to drive seniors to medical appointments. Paying from them to be driven by cab, something environmentally worse than them driving themselves, was cheaper than dealing with missed appointments. I could see a situation where a city might pay for a homeless person to be driven each day if doing so allowed them to hold a steady job.

this is a complex issues for sure, now the questionis what are these cases about?

if its stuff like parking tickets, broken tail lights, low-grade speeding then i totally agree woth the judge

if its drunk driving or driving while under the influence or things where you put others in danger then... why is the driver doing those things if their livelihoods depend on it?

Just food for thought

Rural areas existed before the invention of the automobile. Rural communities can still be dense and support active transportation (walking, cycling, etc.) for many people's daily activities.

Most people don't live in rural areas though, so the kinds of solutions (free cars!) that might work there are not appropriate for urban and suburban areas.

> Rural areas existed before the invention of the automobile.

Yes, and farming was ubiquitous and highly labor intensive then. In 1940, the US had about 13 million farm workers. Today it's about 3 million.

Farms were also much smaller.

I know a few amount of people who should never drive a car. That is they are so bad that drunks are better drivers. Some are just old and the body is failing, others never had the mental ability to do it.

At least in cities there can be (but often isn't) useful public transit.

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